Mr. Kerry: The Problem Is Not Cynicism But Naiveté

Kerry’s Embarrassing ‘Peace Process’ Obsession
Originally published at Rubin Reports.
By: Barry Rubin

There’s an old saying: it’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.

That is Secretary of State John Kerry’s problem. What is remarkable is how Kerry has painted himself into a corner, not just staking his term as secretary of state on making Israel-Palestinian peace but in doing so in a matter of weeks.

"If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance," Kerry told the American Jewish Committee. "I have heard all of the arguments for why it is too difficult to end this conflict," he added. "Cynicism has never solved anything. It has never given birth to a state, and it won’t."

Well, not exactly. First, Kerry is practically begging the Palestinian Authority to accept a state. The problem is not cynicism but naiveté.  The cynicism is based on long experience and a careful evaluation of the political, economic, and strategic factors involved.

Second, Kerry hasn’t heard that the last chance already happened thirteen years ago at the Camp David meeting in 2000. No amount of wishful thinking will make it otherwise. In fact, that endangers people.

"The problem is not cynicism but naiveté.  The cynicism is based on long experience and a careful evaluation of the political, economic, and strategic factors involved."

Let’s review:

–PLO, Palestinian Authority, and Fatah leader Yasir Arafat turned down an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and around $20 billion in aid as a starting point in further talks.

–He launched a five-year-long war of terror against Israel in which around 2000 Israelis were killed.

–When offered an even better deal by President Bill Clinton Arafat turned it down.

–Even when besieged in his headquarters—saved only by U.S. intervention from total, humiliating defeat—Arafat still rejected compromise.

–In the 13 years since the Camp David meeting the Palestinians have not pursued any serious negotiations.

–About half the territory and people the Palestinian Authority claims to negotiate for is not even under its control but is being ruled by Hamas which advocates genocide against the Jews and is totally opposed to peace on any terms. Hamas would do everything possible to wreck any deal made by the PA and that group has about 20 to 30 percent support on the West Bank.

–In the present climate of Islamist triumphalism, Hamas has more state support than the PA and the PA is terrified of being “traitorous moderates.”

–The PA strategy is clearly to get maximal recognition of a state without having to make a deal with Israel. Kerry’s recent offer of $4 billion (for tourism development!)–how much will the U.S. government pay off the PA for pretending to negotiate?–was turned down by the PA within 24 hours even though they could use the money for the leadership’s Swiss bank accounts.

Might some of these facts be relevant?

Kerry gave the typical line that unless Israel gets a two-state solution, it will have to choose between its Jewish and democratic nature.

Ludicrously untrue. If that didn’t happen when Israel occupied the whole of the territories captured by it in 1967 and governed the Arabs there on a daily basis—a period of 27 years in the West Bank and about 35 in the Gaza Strip—it isn’t going to happen now. There was a time when Israelis advocated annexation of these territories but that hasn’t been true for many years. Of course, Israel will not have to choose.

Who cares about how many Palestinians there are, they aren’t being ruled by Israel and they are not Israeli citizens. Absent as usual from Kerry’s analysis are the risks that Israel would take if it accepted a Palestinian state under current conditions.

"Both sides are pretending to weigh choices in order to avoid insulting you."

Consider these statements by Kerry:

The belief that a security fence and the status quo could bring Israel security are “lulling themselves into a delusion….The absence of peace is perpetual conflict. … We will find ourselves in a negative spiral of responses and counter-responses….”

The problem, however, is an unspoken premise that if the status quo changed and there was an independent Palestinian State, the conflict would go away and there would be full peace. In fact what would happen is that the conflict would continue under worse strategic conditions for Israel.

"I am confident that both sides are weighing the choices that they have in front of them very, very seriously."

No. Both sides are pretending to weigh choices in order to avoid insulting you. A serious analysis of the factors involved show that nothing is going to happen. An accurate view of reality should be the foundation for policymaking.

A case can be made for Kerry showing himself as working hard for peace in order to defuse any possible effect on events elsewhere in the region. But by working too hard, spending too much of his time on the issue, and making absurd claims that he is going to succeed, Kerry is setting himself up for an embarrassing fall.

Also by promising quick results he is destroying the chance for the United States to pretend it is laboring around the clock supposedly–what?–to ease the situation with a civil war in Syria, a nuclear bomb in Iran, a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, etc.

More Misery Ahead For Israel?

President Obama's Pick For New UN Ambassador May Very Well Be More Evidence That His Policies And World View Remain Tepid Toward Israel And The Middle East

Despite all of the feel-good rhetoric in support of Israel's national interests during his first and only trip to that nation as commander-in-chief in March, President Obama's actions have spoken volumes to the contrary. Witness the appointments of outspoken critics of Israel: John Kerry as Secretary of State, Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, John Brennan as CIA Director. Witness the leaks of classified documents regarding the building of Israeli military bases, the continued explicit political, financial and military support of anti-Israel leaders like Erdogan and Morsi and the waffling on Iran and Syria. These are but a few examples that shoot holes in the theory of some that the POTUS has changed to a more supportive perspective vis a vis Israel and its place in the middle east.

Now, his latest move has supporters of Israel and those in the know regarding middle-east events shuddering at the news. President Obama's pick for UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, former chair of his Atrocities Prevention Board once called for the United States to force troops into Israeli-controlled territory in order to end abuses she said were being committed by both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Recently working at the State Department under Hillary Clinton and as National Security Council Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, Samantha Power once said in an interview with UC Berkley's Harry Kreisler that "external intervention" in the form of a "mammoth protection force" was necessary to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians. She acknowledged that forcing our way in was undemocratic but insisted it was necessary.

"Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. I mean, It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic," she said.

The new leader of Obama’s UN agenda, in the same interview, failed to refute a suggestion by the interviewer in 2002 that the Israelis themselves might commit genocide. The interviewer asked,

"Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine – Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would in response to current events would you advise to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, lest if one party or another be looking like they might be moving toward genocide?"

Instead of getting up and walking out on this “thought experiment,” Power responded by appearing to imply a moral equivalence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who were then waging an Intifada against the Jewish state.

She spoke of “major human rights abuses” occurring in the conflict and quoted New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman’s use of the term “Sharafat” to describe then-leaders Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, both of whom she said had been “dreadfully irresponsible” and were “destined to destroy the lives of their own people.”

Here is a segment of the interview.

Power, you’ll notice, spoke sarcastically of the influence of U.S. Jews, saying with a chuckle her proposal to force troops upon Israel “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” She also suggested the United States was wasting its money supporting the Israeli Defense Forces, which safeguards Israel against another genocide, sneering at the “billions of dollars” we spend “servicing Israel’s military.”

Power backs the goals of the “Responsibility to Protect” movement, or “RtoP,” which advocates international military intervention in countries where the most egregious human rights abuses are occurring. She was reportedly a key force behind President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya.While Power has been a significant voice and a passionate proponent for anti-genocide activity, she has been criticized for being tendentious and militaristic, for answering a "problem from hell" with a "solution from hell."

Her second book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide offers a survey of the origin of the word genocide, the major genocides of the 20th century, as well as an analysis of some of the underlying reasons for the persistent failure of governments and the international community to collectively identify, recognize and then respond effectively to genocides ranging from the Armenian Genocide to the Rwandan Genocide. This work and related writings have been criticized by the historian Howard Zinn for downplaying the importance of "unintended" and "collateral" civilian deaths that could be classified as genocidal.

That Power has indicated that she equates Israel's focus on defensible borders, its commitment to protecting its citizens and its directed and patient responses to continuous attacks on its cities as a substrate for genocidal activity by Israel toward Palestinians is at best misguided, but at worst a manifestation of an apoplectic anti-Israel stance. This view, widely held and continuously preached by the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist movement and others is both erroneous and, some would argue, only a mask for anti-Semitism.

Only time will tell what impact the latest pick for an important Administration post will have on foreign affairs and world politics. But, if the past is any indicator of future events, it does not bode well for Israel's future relationship with one of its only remaining allies.

Portions of this blog were taken from Keith Koffler's article on Samantha Power on his website White House Dossier dated April 24, 2012

Holocaust Remembrance Day - A Day of Grief, A Day of Hope

Sixty-seven years ago, my father and mother along with my uncle Zvi and aunt Vita moved from Trieste, Italy to Bat Galim.  Bat Galim was a small beach area in the heart of the port city of Haifa in the then British colony of Palestine.  The four of them took up residence in a one bedroom apartment because it was all they could afford, and that barely.  The two best of friends, having fought side-by-side in the Palestinian unit of the British Army against the Germans for 6 years, were still part of the British service but had to work at night driving taxis to make a little extra money for their fledgling families to survive.

It was a difficult life in the post-war middle-east territory.  The dream of all Jews after the Holocaust and World War II - to have a place to call home where Jews could live in peace for the first time in nearly 2000 years - was a struggle.  As a British colony, the spoils of victory over the Ottomans in World War I, the region was controlled by British "occupiers" whose soldiers and service workers didn't want to be there and were dealing with constant conflict, both politically and physically.

Despite a commitment by the British government through Lord Balfour in 1917 of developing the territory as a homeland for the Jewish people and the mandate of the League of Nations to divide the land into Jewish and Arab regions, politicking had usurped promises and World War II had taken attention away from this mandate.  But, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Jews who were now desperately trying to move to the region despite strict quotas by the British, were more determined than ever to re-establish their identity as a people in their ancient homeland.

Less than one year prior to their move from Italy, my father along with his best friend Zvi and their battalion had finished sweeping up the boot of Italy and cleansing it of German troops.  They had been camped at their new base in Trieste, a northern port town near the border of Italy and Yugoslavia.  The Jewish boys, part of that Palestinian unit of the British Army, had been befriended by a small group of local Jewish young adults.  It was a moment of destiny for those two boys - my father and his friend Zvi - in many ways.

At an evening gathering at a local club, Zvi had met Vita, a beautiful Italian-born Jewish girl whose family had escaped the pogroms of Russia two decades earlier.  It didn't take long for him to fall deeply in love with this brash and fiesty 22 year old.  Three months later they were married in a civil ceremony attended by his fellow soldiers and many of the small local Jewish community that they had befriended.  Of course, my mother, Vita's sister - her bride's mate - attended the wedding with her then fiancé.  Sadly for her fiancé, who wasn't much of a dancer, Zvi's best friend was also part of the group reveling in the celebration.

My father and mother met on the dance floor that night and for three hours danced until the blisters on their feet cried out for mercy.  The rest, as they say, is history.  The next day, my mother returned the engagement ring to her poor former fiancé, and began spending every moment she was able to with my father.  They planned on marrying some time soon.  Unfortunately, the joy of that moment of providence was short-lived.

It had been seven years since my father had escaped Czechoslovakia during the German occupation of
The Sudetenland after his mother put him along with a dozen other Jewish 14 and 15 year old boys on a train to Denmark.  That event foretold an ominous future for the Jews of Eastern Europe.  Soon thereafter, although they desperately tried, it was impossible for the Jewish boys to return to Prague and my father and his group made the fateful decision to attempt the journey to the Palestinian territory where thousands of other Jews were attempting to go.  After multiple harrowing experiences during their three month journey, they arrived in the middle east, soon after joined the British Army and fought for nearly six years against Rommel in Northern Africa before being moved to the European front.

So, after seven years, Czechoslovakia was finally liberated from German control and my father was granted a weekend pass from his unit in Trieste to return to Prague to find his family.   My mother, with memories of her father being arrested by the SS and having found out not long before that he died on a train to one of the German death camps, had a very foreboding sense about this trip, but could not - would not - let my father know about her feelings.  He had to go.  As my father left in his British Army Jeep, my mother suddenly felt very alone.  The memories of her own six years of terror were running through her mind - hiding from the SS with her mother and Vita in rat infested attics, sleeping in barns, narrowly escaping capture time and time again.

Three days later there was a knock on my mother's door.  She opened it to find my father, exhausted from no sleep, tears streaming down his face.  They fell into each others arms, both crying uncontrollably - he didn't have to say a word.  She knew.

For the next several hours they locked themselves in the bathroom and sat on the cold tile floor crying together, my father too embarrassed to allow anyone else to see him in this state.  He told her the story, from arriving in Prague, finding no one he knew in all the old houses in the Jewish neighborhoods he grew up in and ultimately, going to the city hall and researching the records of his family.  You see, the Germans kept meticulous records.

And there, his worst nightmares were revealed.  His mother, father, two sisters...his brother-in-law and niece...his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents...all gone...taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau...gassed, burnt...dead.  He alone was left.  My father was never the same after that.  Although, he and my mother did eventually marry, moved to Bat Galim, and began to put the pieces of life back together.

In partnership with my uncle, my father was part of the underground - helping to obtain and hide weapons for the Haganah and Palmach in their struggle for independence from the British and against Arab terrorism.  They helped to establish the fledging State of Israel during its war of Independence and thereafter.  My brother was born in 1948 and soon after, my cousin Ruthi was born.   The two families living together at times to make ends meet, raising their children together...surviving with memories...and with a hope that never again will the Jewish people be defenseless against evil and tyranny.

My parents eventually moved to the United States to be with my grandmother who had moved to the US from Italy after the war.  I was born not long after.  My aunt Vita, uncle Zvi, and my other aunt and uncle - Olga and Jackie, who had moved to the region before World War II had ended - remained in Israel and each raised two beautiful children, several grandchildren and many great grandchildren.  They went on to endure more bloodshed, wars, terrorism, and grief.  My oldest cousin was killed by a mine around the time of the Six Day War.

My mother is the sole surviver of her family now, her mother, sisters, brother - who all survived the holocaust - all since have passed on to their eternal home.  My father has passed also, having lived with a grief that no one should ever have to bare...a survivor's guilt that a boy emotionally entrenched at the age of 15 could never begin to understand.  He was a man who quietly, constantly ruminated over the question...if I was only there, could I have saved my family...could I have protected them?  His best friend, my uncle Zvi, has also passed on, leaving a legacy of strength that will never be forgotten.

Today, Israel commemorates a national holiday - if one can call it that.  It is Yom HaShoah (literally, The Day of The Holocaust) - the date on the calendar that we remember the Six Million men, women and children whose lives were prematurely taken by evil in human form.  It is a day filled with grief - to most it is a collection of stories, of distant memories one, two and three generations removed from the event.  Nevertheless, it is faithfully commemorated and will be for as long as Israel exists throughout generations to come.

But, it is also a day filled with thanksgiving and hope.  We give thanks for and honor men like uncle Zvi and my father, women like Vita and my mother, who didn't just survive the holocaust, but fought through and somehow transcended the grief and the living memories...to build a nation from dirt and rock into what is now "a land filled with milk and honey."  We have hope that the children of the survivors, the grandchildren and great grandchildren can one day live in peace, focused only on how they can help the world become a better place and less on surviving the next onslaught of anti-semitic treachery.

Today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, reminds us that our Creator, the G-d of this universe, is not a puppet master.  He has given us out of His great love for us, the free will to choose...we have the capability as a race and as individuals to do enormous evil.  We also have the capacity to do tremendous good.  The Torah says in the book of Deuteronomy, "I call heaven and earth to witness today that before you is life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Therefore, choose life, so that you will live, you and your descendants, loving Adonai your G-d, clinging to Him..."  WE have been given the ability to choose between good and evil, between life and death, between becoming a blessing or a curse to others, to be beneficent or malevolent.

Yom HaShoah also reminds us that even if others have chosen evil over good, the curse over the blessing, death over life, we still have the capacity to survive even the most vile onslaught to our humanness and to rebuild in hopes of a better day.  Today, we traditionally say, "Never again...never forget!"  But, we also say, "The nation of Israel lives" - Am Yisrael Chai!